Parenting power: bringing up teenagers

Parenting a teen can be a minefield. In this extract from John Sharry's Parent Power, he explains how it's all about compromise, compromise and more compromise.

He's become so secretive and moody and just wants to be with his friends all the time.

She's become so argumentative and abusive. Anytime we ask her to do anything she starts World War Three in the house.

Sound familiar? Becoming a parent of a teenager can be a troubled and stormy time. The young open child who chatted happily to you can suddenly become this argumentative and resentful teenager who challenges everything you say. Teenagers can become secretive and suspicious and you can feel redundant and locked out of their lives. In addition, you can be full of fears for your teenager.

There are so many pressures on teenagers to be involved in drugs and alcohol or to become sexually active at too young an age. With their increasing independence, you can also fear for their safety, worrying that they might be attacked or placed in very unsafe situations. You struggle with setting boundaries and limits with a teenager who can resent your authority as a parent. Parents are usually in their forties or fifties at the time and may be going through their own midlife crisis. At this stage of life parents are often wondering about the direction of their own lives and careers, sometimes feeling that life has passed them by.

Having teenagers who seem to have endless opportunities and who appear ungrateful can stir up a lot of emotion in parents, even causing them to feel envious. Alternatively, parents may be looking forward to a quieter period in their life, only for this to be rudely disturbed by the arrival of a noisy and demanding teenager. In this context it is understandable for parents to react negatively to this stormy period, to lose sight of the bigger picture and miss out on the enjoyable aspects of parenting a teenager.

It's difficult for teenagers too

The transition from child to adult is difficult for teenagers also. So many changes occur in these short years that it is not surprising that they feel at times confused, frightened and lacking in confidence. Physically, their bodies grow and change in ways that might make them feel awkward and self-conscious. Emotionally, they can be subject to great mood swings as they discover the range of human emotions.

From intense feelings of love and infatuation to anger and hatred, teenage emotional life can be like a roller coaster. Physically, teenagers become fully developed and can experience intense sexual feelings that can be alarming to them, especially if they have no one to talk to about what is going on. Intellectually, teenagers also make great gains, being able to analyse things and to develop their own opinions and views.

They can begin to see the inadequacies in the parental world (and often are very eloquent in pointing this out) and wonder about their role and meaning in life. Teenagers are under pressures, some of which are greater than in previous years, and need the support of their parents more than ever.